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February is the coldest month in the Canadian Big House. The Super Bowl is over. Christmas mail that, only six weeks ago, said someone cares, starts to shed its rhinestone sincerity. Even hockey hits a mid-life crisis (normally), with most guys forgetting if their favourite team is 32 and 23 or vice-versa. February is a month of purgatory days and cold, cold puddles.

“We need some money,” Kaukaughe said to me a few Februaries ago. “Little Injuns are freezing.”

I was about to suggest to my life-sentenced Ojibwa lawyer that if his two-member tribe were feeling the winter winds, he should probably just stuff his hands down the front of his pants and warm the little buggers up. Then the big man clarified.

“You know my chick is a teacher, right? Yesterday she was subbing over here on the Flats at a school where a bunch of little Sto:lo kids go. None of them had jackets. Or gloves. Or boots.”

I lowered my book and breathed a low whistle. It had been the coldest winter in 25 years in the Fraser Valley, with some days punching past minus 30. Not even the orneriest Pen geese dared to walk the Big Yard that winter. And although the snow had turned to rain, the mercury still wasn’t tickling much above zero. I couldn’t fight off a shiver.

“How much?”

“I don’t know. A grand?”

I tried not to blink, but probably failed. Yet another reason I don’t play poker.

“What do we get for a grand?”

“Constance from John Howard said she has a patch at Sears — last season’s stuff. We could probably get 30 or 40 jackets, maybe even muscle them into upping some mitts.”

Sounded like the perfect fit. Except for one thing. Canadian cons — even if they have a job — only make about $25 a week. With Christmas still filling the rear-view mirror, nearly every guy in the joint was tapped out. Even the bookie was scratching for spare change. Where were we going to get a thousand bucks?

Most Canadians think of prison — and especially the penitentiary — as the great dustbin of human detritus. With its sharp-toothed double fences, and reinforced concrete barricades, the clink is the carpet under which we sweep all our dirty secrets. One Molson too many before the 5:30 drive? To the dungeon with ye. Your kid is beating back the student loans with a basement crop? Say hello to the prison visiting room, Pops. And God forbid if those Oxycontins that were walking you through the working day ever start running your nights. Your next New Year’s resolution will have something to do with cheap soap and a communal shower.

But then what?

On the chance that you missed it — somewhere between our obsession with the U.S. fiscal golf-bunker and all that mewling over the empty hole where hockey used to live — writer Tobi Cohen dropped a telling, page-10 contribution into Canada.com during the Christmas season. According to Cohen, in the past two years, Canadian prisoners raised almost $130,000 for more than 130 Canadian charities. A school-lunch program in Chilliwack, Habitat for Humanity, the Royal Canadian Legion, Sick Kids hospital, the MS society of Canada — the list goes on. And none of them were corporate tax havens — or PR stunts. It took some journalistic digging (and Access to Information laws) for Cohen to discover an awkward truth that the Federal government knows all too well: all things being equal, Canada’s donors in detention give like there’s no tomorrow.

But if you’re wondering why a guy who murders 49 defenceless women, or another who turns his victim into macabre mail-outs would ever crack open their piggybanks for those in need — the fact is, I’m not so sure they did. The thimbleful of names that sell most cable-news advertising in this country make up less than .01 per cent of the prison population. As for the other 40,000 Canadian citizens who are paying their calendar-counting dues to the court, they just did what they’ve always done: Saw a need and stepped up. Prison didn’t give them that. But neither did it take it away.

“Oh my God,” said Constance. The director of the Fraser Valley John Howard Society stared at the cheque with her jaw half-hinged. “How the…?” She looked up at a grinning Kaukaughe, and then just kicked etiquette to the curb. He drank in her full-sized hug in earnest gulps.

“But this is crazy,” she said, looking at the cheque again. “How did you guys get so much?”

I told her, we just went knocking on cell doors with a donation sheet. The guys really came up big. Then again, the delivery might have helped. When you’re asking folks for their thoughts on frozen Indian kids, it never hurts to have a six-foot-two, 240-pound convicted killer, of aboriginal descent, standing behind you. At least you can nosh while you’re at it.

I.M GreNada is the pen name of a Canadian prisoner who has been serving life for murder since 1994. The people he writes about are real, but their names have been changed. You can read more about him at theincarceratedinkwell.ca.

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